Iowa man pleads guilty to beating DC police officer on Jan. 6

An Iowa man pleaded guilty on Thursday to assaulting D.C. police officer Michael Fanone during the riot at the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021.

Kyle Young pleaded guilty to assaulting, resisting or impeding officers and now faces a statutory sentence of eight years and financial penalties. 

The Justice Department said Young was among a group that approached a police line at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and dragged Fanone into the crowd. 

“Young held the officer’s left wrist and pulled the officer’s arm away from his body,” the department wrote. 

While in the crowd, Fanone was assaulted, tazed in the back of the neck and had to plead for his life after one person said Fanone should be killed.

Along with dragging Fanone into the crowd, the Justice Department says Young shined a strobe light at officers, hit them with a stick-like object and threw a large audio speaker at the police line. 

“At around 2:54 p.m., Young joined the rioters who were pushing against the police line. While in the tunnel area beneath the archway, he held a strobe light toward the police line and pushed forward a stick-like object. He assisted in throwing a large audio speaker toward the police line,” the Justice Department said.

Young was arrested in April in 2021 and will be be sentenced in August. 

Other individuals who assaulted Fanone at the Capitol are either waiting to plead guilty or have pleaded not guilty to their alleged crimes. 

After Fanone was attacked, he suffered from a heart attack and a traumatic brain injury, quitting the force and joining CNN as a contributor. 

Since the Capitol riot, the Justice Department has arrested almost 800 people from nearly every state in the country.